Pulling Dents
by Ellethwen Celtica
Summary: Hunk wants to fix up the Lions, but first, he has to gain their trust.


**Disclaimer: Own nothing. Don't know much about spaceships. Almost everything about school is from personal experience, but I'm not Hawaiian, so idk their schools might be better than mine.**

* * *

The lions weren't working properly. Of course they weren't, they'd been sitting for ten thousand years, and then forced to work hard and fast immediately. Hunk doubted that anyone else even noticed, but as an engineer, he'd been trained to spot these sort of things without doubt. The engineer, after all, was the one most responsible for his crew's lives. Pilots were important, but there wasn't much to hit in space. However, if the cargo bay door seals were misaligned or the vertical stabilizers were a few inches too short or a bolt was loose in the engine compartment, that could mean death in a matter of minutes.

Hunk was totally ready to work on the lions, touch them up, get them running at peak awesomeness again. There was only one problem: thanks to Altean engineering, the lions were all somewhat sentient, had personalities of their own, and didn't trust Hunk. And sure, Hunk had dealt with technology that had an attitude before, but said technology didn't have the ability to vaporize you or crush you on the spot. So when he walked into the hangar, armed with a large set of Altean tools that Coran had set him up with, he was a little nervous.

He figured he'd start with Yellow; after all, they did have some sort of bond, and he was its Paladin. Also, Yellow was the nicest lion. "Hey buddy," Hunk said, approaching with the toolset. There was a glint in its eyes; it was listening. "So, uh, I noticed that your aft starboard reaction control thrusters were knocked a little off from where they're supposed to be, and I brought some tools down, and I can fix it for you, if you want."

He felt Yellow's firm negativity to that idea. Yellow still didn't trust him enough for repairs. He was disappointed, but understood. Still, his fingers itched to fix, and he wondered what he would have to do to gain Yellow's trust. Surely, if it was sentient, it must be uncomfortable. It had dents all over, the aft starboard reaction control thrusters were off kilter, some of the joints seemed a little stiff, and honestly, if he was Yellow, he'd like a new coat of paint, too. And that was just the outside. Quiznak knows what was going on beneath the hood.

He felt an idea growing in the back of his mind, one that he knew Yellow was putting there. "Dents?" he asked. "You want me to fix the dents?" This was a cautious affirmative. Yellow was willing to work with him, albeit slowly. This was a way to test the waters. Hunk was up to the task.

He knew he'd seen a dent puller in the toolbox. Apparently, it didn't matter if it was steel, aluminum, or whatever alien element the lions were made of; suction was still the best way to get dents out. Granted, the Altean one was a little more high-tech, made for really strong dent-pulling power with not much effort, but it was nearly identical to the ones on Earth.

He grabbed the dent puller and a ladder and got to work.

XXX

Pulling dents, Hunk decided after about fifteen minutes, was the most boring necessary action ever. He started talking to relieve the boredom. He was sort of talking to Yellow, but he was also sort of talking to himself.

"You know, I used to do this with my dad," he said. "Pull dents. Not often, but enough. Dad's sort of the mechanic of the family, so every time something goes wrong with my aunt's car or my cousin's van, they just take it over to us and we'd work on it. He wasn't ever a professional mechanic, though I bet he could be. He's a short-order cook on the weekends, but during the week he stayed home with me and my sisters. He still stays home with my sisters, but not me, obviously, because I'm in space, and even before that, I was at the Garrison. Mom works at the Mauna Kea Observatories. That's how I got a letter from the Garrison in the first place, through her space connections. I didn't think I'd ever have to go into space or anything when I signed up as an engineer. I thought that just meant, you know, designing better rockets and stuff, which can safely happen on the ground, in a happily Earth-based laboratory."

He looked up from the front left paw that he was working on and toward Yellow's head. It didn't seem to be listening. Hunk shrugged and continued talking anyway.

"Lance and I met on the first day and became friends because we were roommates, but I was still kind of surprised when we ended up on a team together. I still thought that it was going to be a team of all engineers. I was actually on a different team first, which _was_ all engineers, but it was like a probationary team, just to see if you would make the cut for the Garrison. We didn't have any flight simulations or anything then. We just took all our classes together and learned how to do team-building exercises."

He stopped talking for a moment, having to really pull on one dent to make it pop out. When that didn't quite work, he put a foot up under the edge of the dent and used his leg for added power. That finally popped the dent.

"It's really nice at the Garrison. Everyone there is like, gifted and talented or straight honor students, so the classes go way faster and even though the teachers are all military and scientists, for the most part they're super understanding and willing to help. We got to do a lot of exploratory projects where we did hands on stuff and built or researched things that interested us. We never had to be held back because the rest of the class was slower than us, like in public school. And we never had to take classes that we've already taken at a different school because 'it'll be a good review' and 'the transcripts only say math, not specifically algebra two, so we can't let you skip this class.' I was so happy when I finally turned sixteen and could apply for the Garrison."

The front legs were done now. He moved on to the back, talking louder in case Yellow couldn't hear him. As he started looking for dents, he also noticed a couple of loose pieces that wouldn't fall off the back left foot now, but definitely needed some work before something major happened.

"I hated public school so much. The only good thing about my school was that it offered concurrent classes, so I could take college classes and get high school credit as well, so I knocked out a couple of Garrison requirements that way. Of course, they balanced it out by getting rid of most of the honors classes. It used to be that there were remedial, regular, and honors courses, but then they cut the honors history completely and cut down the science, math, and English so that only one class period of each class was honors, so there was _one_ honors physics class and six non-honors physics classes and the chances that your school schedule would line up enough for you to have more than one honors class a semester was next to nothing. I swear, they put all the honors classes during fourth hour, just for spite. So I could have honors math _or_ honors science, and pretty much wrote English and history off as a loss. Also, the people who inhabit public schools are assholes. Like, every time I ate something at lunch, someone would make a comment about my size, and it's like, 'Hello? I'm eating the same cardboard garbage that you are, so obviously this meal isn't going to make a difference.' And they'd talk about how unathletic I was, but I could bench press most of the assholes who were talking crap. And a lot of the football players were the exact size and shape as I was, and boy, they were adorned with laurels and placed on thrones."

With that last comment, Hunk angrily popped out a rather large dent. Then, finished with the legs, he carefully set up the ladder so that he could work on the main body, which was actually where most of the dents were. It wasn't surprising, since the Galra always went for the biggest part of the target. The dents up here were bigger, too, and Hunk wasn't sure he was going to be able to pop most of them with the small dent puller. He climbed up onto Yellow's back anyway.

"Is it dumb that I'm still mad about high school? I mean, I'm never going back there, it's all in the past, and I had it good compared to the others, like Shiro or Pidge or Lance. Like, I wasn't kidnapped by space aliens or forced to pretend to be someone else in order to find out what happened to my family or struggled all the way through crap education with a family who couldn't help me in my interests only to get to the place of my dreams and get it rubbed in my face that the only reason I was doing what I liked was because the first choice dropped out."

Hunk sighed and pulled dents in silence. After a moment, though, he felt a feeling of warmth, and comfort. "Thanks, Yellow," he said with a small smile. "Wait, does this qualify as a bonding moment?"

There was a definite 'yes' feeling.

Hunk's face lit up. "Awesome! Does this mean I get to work on your thrusters tomorrow?"

The answer from Yellow was still a definite no.

"Hmm, okay, what about the loose panel on your foot. Can I tighten that up tomorrow?"

He got a 'maybe.'


End file.
